He looked me over with wild curiosity. “What the hell did you blow your money on?”
That was a funny story I didn’t think I should share. I kind of went a little wild after I last saw him.
“Just some stuff.”
“Like a car and a van?”
“Why would I buy a van?” I giggled.
“You said ‘stuff’ so for you to get a job I’m thinking something big,” he explained.
“Okay so it wasn’t that big. I needed a thousand dollars.”
He whistled and raised his brows. “Wow, what kind of stuff did you spend a thousand bucks on? Please tell me it wasn’t drugs.”
I didn’t know why but I found myself laughing so hard I couldn’t stop.
“It’s not funny! Was it drugs?” he added, looking worried.
“No, my gosh you think I did drugs?”
He started to laugh now and I grabbed one of the pineapples to cut up.
“Come on tell me, you can’t start talking about something like that and not finish.”
“It was just stuff.”
My parents gave me an allowance so I wouldn’t have to work so they went apeshit when they found out I was a bartender. Brad told them. He could be such a big mouth sometimes. He couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut and that was the one time I really needed him to.
Cole narrowed his eyes at me again.
“Baby, what did you spend a thousand bucks on?” His grin widened, showing off the dimple in his left cheek.
I shook my head, deciding to tell him. “A tattoo…or a few.”
His jaw dropped and his eyes snapped wide. “What? You got tattoos?”
“Why is that so shocking? You have tons,” I pointed out, then looked down at the pineapple quickly because if I’d only known this guy on a casual basis I would have thought he’d had just one tattoo of a dragon going down the left side of his abs.
However, seeing as I’d been more than casual with him, I’d seen the few Japanese characters on the top of his thighs and the snake curling right around the top of his leg and the forked tongue pointing to…well, let’s just say I definitely made sure I was well-versed with his body by the end of that weekend in Vegas.
“I forgot how cute you are when you blush,” he stated, and I looked back up to meet his intense gaze.
“I’m not blushing,” I defended with a little shrug.
“Like hell you aren’t. Good to see you remembered I have tons of tats. Where are yours?”
The spark of desire that flickered in his eyes stirred my own. It was something I’d do well to tamp down on. It was just the look in his eyes that got me.
All my life I’d only ever had one person look at me like that and it was him.
The look was enough to weaken me and hold me captive like the girl I once was. She was still inside me, struggling to break free from the darkness the last few years had over me.
That desire moved me to him and made me toss my hair over my shoulder and lift the back of my top to show off the cascade of butterflies covering my lower back. There were eight of them. One big one that was close to the edge of my left hip and then seven tiny ones fluttering away past it.
They were blue and very distinct. I paid good money to get the best artist.
Warm fingers fluttered down the curve of my back as Cole slid off the stool and trailed the outline of the bigger butterfly. The contact was brief but enough to make my cheeks burn with fire.
I twisted around to face him.
“They suit you. I always figured you’d get butterflies. You love butterflies.”
“Yeah, I love them.”
“That all you did in college?” he asked.
“Yeah I think it’s enough. Did you get more tats?”
“I did…”
“Do I get to see them?”
“You probably shouldn’t…”
I chuckled to hide another blush coming to my cheeks. He caught my face and cupped my chin.
“What?” I asked. We were doing that staring thing again.
I couldn’t stand it the first time around. Now it feels even worse.
“You…”
“Me? What me? Did I say something I shouldn’t have again?”
“No.”
“Then what?” I really wanted to know what was on his mind.
“You do this thing to me and I find I can’t resist you, even when I should.” His hand dropped from my cheek and something inside me deflated like a balloon losing air.
“I should go,” he added, stepping away.
“Why?” I quickly asked. Now instead of my cheeks burning with desire, fury took me. If there was one thing that came from the last few years it was my refusal to keep things that bothered me inside until it screwed with me. All these years there was this one thing on my mind, one thing I kept inside that I desperately wanted to get off my chest and never did. I was about to. “Why should you resist? Same reason as before, or is it different this time?”
Sometimes when I spoke, I actually couldn’t believe such words could come from my mouth. I could tell I’d shocked him too.
“Laila…”
“What? What is it now? Do you know how messed up it is to say that to me and then just walk away and—”
Before I could get the next word out, he swooped down to my lips and covered my mouth with his.
The second the contact was made something awakened inside my soul and unlocked me. It literally felt like I had been awakened, revived from a slumber. A deep, dark cruel slumber my body, mind, and soul was placed in since the last time my lips touched his.
As the kiss turned hungry, I knew he felt it too for the way he smoothed his hand to the back of my head and angled my face so he could deepen the kiss.
Greed and need mingled with a force that cascaded through my body, working its way through me from the top of my head right down to the tips of my toes.
It made me question how it was I could have lived so long without his kiss, his lips on mine. Him.
As the thought pulsed through my mind it was almost like it struck him too and he pulled away from me. As he did, heat left my body.
“God Laila, I …”
“Please…don’t stop touching me.” I’d never begged for anything in my life. I never even asked Porter for child support or anything I was entitled to. It wasn’t in me to be vulnerable to the same man who hurt me the most.
It was funny. I walked in on my husband cheating on me and it never hurt me more than Cole telling me that we weren’t a good idea. Everything with Porter sent me over the edge, but I was already walking that thin line.
Cole reached out and caught my face again. This time the sensual flame that burned in the depths of his bright blue gaze spoke of his thoughts. It was almost a promise that he wouldn’t stop touching me.
To confirm it he moved back to my lips and this kiss felt more like coming home. We kissed and savored the rhythmic dance of our tongues as they tangled and teased.
I slid my hands up the hard walls of his wide powerful chest and he tugged on the edge of my top.
He bunched it up in front of me and pulled hard.
The next moment saw him lifting it over my head and me raising my arms to give him better access.
I pulled on his shirt too and he helped me out by whipping it off, revealing the enhanced version of what I last saw of him.
He had another tattoo at the edge of the dragon.
This one was a Celtic cross. I reached out to touch it and smiled. The dark ink looked so striking against the deep ridge of muscle, and his skin beneath my fingertips was tight and taught. For sure the kind of skin a man who’d just ran a marathon would have.
“There’s more like that.” He smirked, inclining his head to the side so that good old lock of hair could drift over his eye. Eight years ago I thought he was alluring. Sexy as hell was perhaps a better description in the present moment.
“Is there now?” I asked with a sassy smile.
�
��Yeah.”
No more talking.
His lips returned to mine. Back then I remembered feeling reality slip from me, the world filled only with him. Now was no different.
He moved with me to the wall and pushed me up against it, tugging off my bra and tossing it to the side.
My breasts, full and round, bobbed invitingly toward him with my nipples diamond hard, begging for his attention. Pleading for it.
My whole body was pleading for it. Needing him.
The strength of the need almost threatened to bring reality back because I recalled how badly I just wanted to be with him after Vegas. Then I never saw him again. How could eight years have passed by without us being like this?
His mouth closing over my left nipple stole my thoughts away, pushing them to the wayside as pleasure surged through my body on a wave of raw ecstasy that tugged on my groin, coiling and clawing right from down deep and rising. It rose higher and higher and grew when he started sucking hard.
Mindless moans of pleasure fell from my lips with such a force I had to press my head back into the wall and grasp onto his shoulders to keep myself from falling away.
It was times like these when I was grateful that Peter’s bedroom was on the other side of the house. Upstairs and to the corner. Close enough to me, but far enough so that no sound could disturb him.
I hadn’t been with anyone since Porter left me. I hadn’t had sex in two years. And right now, I truly didn’t want to spoil the moment I was having by thinking of the last time.
No way. I’d much rather think of the first time and the man I was with. He was the same man now, except we were touching each other like we’d been starving for the last eight years.
I knew I was.
I cried out as a shudder coursed through me. I could feel a greedy orgasm getting ready to claim me. One as greedy as I was for him.
A wicked grin lit up his face then and he kissed his way down the flat plane of my stomach where he pushed down my jeans and panties at the same time.
I gasped when he slid two fingers over my mound and deep inside my core. His fingers started sliding in and out easily because I was so wet and ready for him.
“Perfect, just damn perfect,” he muttered, and started moving faster and faster, making me moan louder.
I had to close my eyes. But the flicker of his hot, wet tongue over my skin made me open my eyes again wide.
I looked down at him with his sexy grin that had now gone up to a level of sinful. When he dragged off the rest of my clothes and parted my legs, at least it gave me a heads up on what he was about to do to me.
Nevertheless, I was barely able to catch my breath before he nuzzled his face between my thighs and pushed his tongue through my entrance and up into my core. Thrusting as he tasted me.
Licking, sucking, teasing, sending me over the edge and beyond.
My skin burned from the sparks of electricity that bounced all over my nerve endings. Sparks of wild lightening, hot and scorching. He licked hard over the throbbing, sensitive nub of my clit. That’s all it took.
“Cole, I’m coming,” I cried and grabbed his shoulders so hard that I was pretty certain I’d pierced his skin.
Control over anything was lost on me.
“Come for me baby, come…” he commanded, and I did.
My release came, flowing from me like a river, except the flow seemed to come from the top of my head and flush down with fire singing through my veins and heating up my blood with the burst of energy.
He, in the meantime, returned his mouth to my core and drank me up, lapping up the flow of nectar, leaving nothing.
With a growl he rose to his feet, reached for a condom from his back pocket, and undid his belt buckle.
He was fast. It took seconds to shrug out of his clothes and for him to sheath his massive cock with the condom.
I had just seconds to take in the beauty of him and catch a glimpse of more Japanese characters and Celtic swirls along the edge of his pelvis, and the wing of a dragon wrapping around his left leg. My mouth began to water.
He flipped me around to face the wall and took hold of my hips. In the moment all I could do was press against the wall when the fat head of his cock brushed over my entrance and he slammed into me.
I gasped like I was trying to gather air, as he started pumping into me. Though I knew air wasn’t what I needed. The blast of pleasure that hit me had me on the edge again. I was completely filled with him.
His pumps became long hard thrusts that forced me to adjust and take in his length and thickness. As soon as I did his pumps sped up and he started pounding into me with the greed that had consumed us.
“Fuck, you feel so damn good Laila,” he growled.
I answered with a loud moan when I tried to talk and that made him speed up all the more, grabbing my hips so he could rut into me. My hair fell forward over my face and the long dark strands were all I saw as he claimed me relentlessly.
Need.
He took my body like he needed me as much as I needed him, then the pounding became quicker and there was the onset of my orgasm again.
This time I just came and screamed into my release, allowing him to take me.
Seconds later his cock pulsed inside me and the speed of his thrusts made my breasts bounce painfully against my chest.
The blast of heat and fire flowing over me prolonged the ultimate pleasure and it was like I orgasmed again in those few seconds as he climaxed too.
Both of us cried out into the powerful force that took us, going higher then falling over the edge of pure, raw erotic bliss that made me see stars.
The stars speckled my vision. I closed my eyes as his pumps slowed and when I opened them again, I wondered what he’d do now.
What will he do now?
What will I do now?
We just had hot wild sex in my kitchen and the last time I was with him we had a whole weekend filled with sex that ended almost as quickly as it began.
He pulled out of me and I found that all I could do was straighten up.
Reality pushed through my mind again. At the same time it slid back out when Cole’s warm fingers ran up the side of my waist.
I turned only then to face him.
“I need more…more of you,” he said, surprising the hell out of me. What was more surprising was the flash of fear in his eyes. It must have matched the fear I now felt coursing through me.
Because…I needed more of him too, but I didn’t know what it would mean if I gave in.
That question came back to me again.
Was I supposed to say no to a man I’d wanted all my life?
“Come upstairs with me,” I whispered, and he answered by catching my face again for another wild kiss. One that was filled with the promises of what the rest of the night held.
Cole
My fears came back full force as the sun rose.
They all came back to me, rushing in on me like a tempestuous wave in the eye of a storm.
I’d been awake for about an hour. It was still dark outside when I woke up and I willed myself not to look at the time nor my phone, or anything that would pull me from the night I shouldn’t have had with Laila.
Shouldn’t…
I hated that word. It was an asshole word that posed as something that was restricted.
It was what she had always been to me. She was a shouldn’t.
Off limits…
I hated the past because there were always several reasons that placed her out of my reach, Brad being a main one. Today was the first time I’d truly come to terms with the reason why I listened to Brad.
I’d always been the rebel and there was no way under the sun I’d allow a man to dictate to me that I couldn’t have a woman I’d wanted.
What stopped me in the past wasn’t him. What stopped me was the feeling of being undeserving of her. There was all the shit with Cindy, then after that storm blew over and I realized I was no longer in trouble it made me take a long h
ard look at myself. That was what happened.
That was the truth.
Cindy was just one example of my assholish ways and the player I was back then. That look over myself made me realize I wasn’t deserving of someone like Laila, who should have had someone better take her virginity.
That was why I stayed away.
And now…
I wasn’t the player anymore, or the playboy, but…confusion had my mind all over the place.
Times had changed. We work together, we work with Brad, and I was warned away from her yet again by my best friend who thought I would make things worse for his sister who had already been through enough.
That was what I woke to.
The memory and the realization that maybe Brad was right.
I’d been staring at her lying peacefully next to me, looking like the goddess she was in her deep sleep. I’d never wanted a woman more than I wanted her.
Even I had to admit that last night may have made things worse for the simple fact that it made it complicated.
Last night showed that my reasoning for years ago was bullshit.
I’d told her I thought it wasn’t a good idea for us to be together and last night just wiped that out and raised more questions she’d have. Then what would I say?
I had no problem telling her about Cindy, but then there was Brad.
Now it actually mattered because she worked for him. It had never crossed her mind before that he’d have a problem with us and I knew how much she loved him and always did her best to make him proud.
So yeah, what I’d done is made things worse by complicating the professional relationship I was supposed to have with her.
It was that thought that made me move.
I got off the bed, looked at her one last time before I got dressed, and left the room.
Leaving was on my mind, but I found myself stopping at the edge of the stairs by Peter’s room. The little guy had grown on me. He reminded me of her. He was her. Peter was like all the good that made Laila rolled into one.
In my conflicted state of mind, I found myself taking those few more steps that would take me inside his room rather than downstairs.
I stopped by the door and looked over at Peter asleep, tucked in bed and comfortable. His downy mass of brown hair was all that was visible, peaking up from the snuggle of his blanket. His little face was so small and angelic looking.
Cole Page 6
